Comparative Business Ethics and Social Responsibility Essay, HC2121

This essay delves into the realm of business ethics and social responsibility, exploring the critical importance of ethical conduct in today's business landscape. It begins by highlighting the significance of ethical norms and their impact on organizational success, emphasizing the need for businesses to prioritize ethical practices. The essay then presents a case study involving a Google whistleblower, analyzing the ethical issues of transparency and employee rights. It discusses the roles of stakeholders, corporate governance, and various approaches to ethical decision-making within organizations. The essay also covers the consequences of unethical behavior and the importance of fostering a culture of ethical awareness and employee empowerment. The conclusion reinforces the necessity for businesses to embrace ethical principles, ensuring long-term sustainability and positive relationships with stakeholders.

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Comparative business ethics & social Responsibility
[Type the document subtitle]
9/12/2019
student name

Comparative business ethics & social Responsibility
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Introduction
In today’s scenario, earning profit for an organization is not enough and it writes to the ethical
business norm in most of the developed nations and developing nations. Ethics include the
modern philosophy is that reflect what is right and wrong in the benefit of most of the people
involved in an activity (Brunes & By, 2012). Considering an organization Business ethics
include study suitable and proper business practices and policies related to potential subjects that
are controversial which includes insider trading, corporate governance, discrimination, bribery,
corporate social responsibility and various fiduciary responsibility. One of the recent case
Published in news article on 13 July 2019, the article in the guardian and reflect launch of
Google whistle blower considering keeping tech ethical project (theguardian, 2019). The article
review will include discussion on key ethical issues that will be identified from the recent news
article. Thus, business ethics considering the Google case will be discussed in the report further.
Google whistleblower launches a project to keep tech ethical
From this article, the discussion considers the ethical value for the employees of the technology
companies who should have a right to know and must have a right of voice to speak up on
projects at which they are working and may feel that the work is not ethical or ethically
unacceptable, this was the major cause for the Google whistleblower. Jack Paulson resigned the
company in 2018 after which he hit deadlines, which included plan of Google to develop a
censorship artificial intelligence considering the Chinese market. It was found on ethical by Jack
Paulson and was attempting to aware are there employees of Tech to fight for the ethics and what
they believe is right or wrong. Tech inquiry was done by Jack, he believes that the focus must

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speak for their rights and what do you think about the project we are working on if it is found
ethical or me from crossing the ethical boundaries. Therefore, it can be said that the key ethical
issues identified from this news article was lack of transparency and prevention of employees
and treating the employees to perform work which was never an option or voluntary wish of an
employee (Dustershoff & MacGregor, 2014).
The key purpose of the inquiry done on the technical company is the ethical norms of employees
as there have been identified increase in employee discount and spread among the employees
which include employees to spoke up to their employers and provision of such tools with the
workers as the true information with accuracy and transparency must be shared with the workers
while working on a project. Project dragonfly was the work for which Jack spoke up against the
ethical issue in the company (Kolk, 2016).
Business ethics include the principles and values of the individual and the organizational values
that are helping the organization to guide the organizational behavior and the individual way to
perform the activities. The ethics of an individual may also affect organizational ethics, like in
case of Google case. Some types of business ethics including some of the basic principles like
integrity, loyalty, honesty, respect and concern, fairness, and leadership ethics. Among these it
can be said that there was a breach of fairness, and honesty by the company for the employees of
the company. Moreover, the social responsibility of the company is to provide appropriate
information with transparency and honestly to the employees while making them work over a
particular project. In addition to this the ethics say that every individual has the right to speak,
due to which the employees must raise the voice if they find anything. The project that found to
be unethical as per the dragonfly project that was revealed in front of the public where the
response from other employees could also reflect that there must be no accountability as this

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project was exploratory project. Jack also argued and it can be said that the augment was found
to be relevant which reflected that the experiments could be harmful or dangerous in case the
free ethical rein is considered. This article talks about the rights of the employees and the
awareness among the employees that if they found something unethical in the company they
must speak about the same against the company. The tech companies must consider this issue as
this may affect the organizational behavior of the company. Jack also stand up against Project
Maven, which was the artificial intelligence project initiated in 2017, which was also part of
Intel, amazon, and Microsoft (Ferrell et al., 2015).
Business ethics are a very relevant aspect of the organization, and the need for organizations to
become ethical has increased. The key importance that has been identified for business ethics to
exist are the individual basic needs, every individual associated with the organization are looking
forward to work in a company that makes them feel that they are proud to work with the
company due to honesty, and believe in what is right or wrong. Other than this, the credibility of
the organization depends on the public as the ethical value depicts great value in the eyes of the
customer and other external stakeholders of the company, the public concern of the company is
found to be effective and a way to success for the company. This reflects that a company must
work towards the ethical norms in order to keep various internal and external stakeholders
satisfied and proud to be associated and part of the company (Wood & Logsdon, 2015).
This was the key issue in Google Company that was identified by the employees, however the
company manages to manipulate some of the employees, but Jack was the one who felt the need
to speak for the unethical practice of the company. This was a correct step to be taken, as it is
necessary for the individual ethics and every individual being ethical can make the process in the
company ethical too, working on the project which is believed to be unethical by the individual

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is not the right option as this may not be good for other stakeholders, or against the protection of
the society and breach of creditability of the employees of the organization. For instance, once
the issue in the company was revealed by Poulson could damage the brand reputation of the
company as well (theguardian, 2019).
Therefore, it can be said that the transparency is essential for an organization to adopt for being
ethical. Transparency is the access of information which needs to be available to the users or the
people associated with the same. This include embodies open communication and honesty as
there is the willingness of an individual or the organization shares the information efficiently,
like in the article case which is the need for the employees to get all the relevant information
related to the consequences and nature of work considering the tech project in which the
employees are performing. Thus, it can be said that the every employee in the organization must
concern about the ethics and must speak against the wrong that is the unethical experience in the
team instead of accepting whatever the company ask to do.
Conclusion
From the article review, it can be concluded that Ethics include the modern philosophy is that
reflect what is right and wrong in the benefit of most of the people involved in an activity. One
of the recent case Published in news article on 13 July 2019, the article in the guardian “Google
whistleblower launches a project to keep tech ethical,” reflect launch of Google whistle blower
considering keeping tech ethical project. Jack Paulson resigned the company in 2018 after which
he hit deadlines, which included plan of Google to develop a censorship artificial intelligence
considering the Chinese market. The key ethical issues identified from this news article were
lack of transparency and prevention of employees and treating the employees to perform work

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which was never an option or voluntary wish of an employee. The ethics of an individual may
also affect the organizational ethics, like in case of Google case. The social responsibility of the
company is to provide appropriate information with transparency and honestly to the employees
while making them work over a particular project. This article talks about the rights of the
employees and the awareness among the employees that if they found something unethical in the
company they must speak about the same against the company. A company must work towards
the ethical norms in order to keep various internal and external stakeholders satisfied and proud
to be associated and part of the company.

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References
Brunes, B. & By, R.T., 2012. Leadership and change: The case for greater ethical clarity.
Journal of business ethics, 108(2), pp.239-52.
Dustershoff, C. & MacGregor, J.N., 2014. The effects of performance rating, leader–member
exchange, perceived utility, and organizational justice on performance appraisal satisfaction:
Applying a moral judgment perspective. Journal of business ethics, p.265.
Ferrell, O.C., Fraedrich, J. & Ferrell, L., 2015. Apple Inc.'s Ethical Success and Challenges. In
Business ethics. 11th ed. Cengage. pp.551-65.
Kolk, A., 2016. The social responsibility of international business: From ethics and the
environment to CSR and sustainable development. Journal of World Business, 51(1), pp.23-34.
theguardian, 2019. google-whistleblower-launches-project-to-keep-tech-ethical. [Online]
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/13/google-whistleblower-launches-
project-to-keep-tech-ethical.
Wood, D.J. & Logsdon, J.M., 2015. Global Business Citizenship: A Transformative Framework
for Ethics and Sustainable Capitalism: A Transformative Framework for Ethics and Sustainable
Capitalism. London: Routledge.

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Appendix
Google whistleblower launches project to keep tech ethical
This article is more than 2 months old
Jack Poulson’s non-profit group Tech Inquiry aims to make it easier for coders to speak out
Employees of tech companies should have the right to know when they are working on projects
they may find ethically unacceptable, a former Google whistleblower has said.
In 2018, Jack Poulson hit headlines after he resigned from his job at Google over the company’s
(now-scrapped) plan to build a censorship AI for the Chinese search market. Now, he wants to
make sure that other tech workers can fight for what’s right without having to put their livelihood
on the line.
Poulson has started Tech Inquiry, a non-profit that aims to make it easier for coders with a
conscience to speak out inside their companies when they feel ethical boundaries are being
crossed. Just as importantly, he’s pushing for greater transparency to prevent workers simply
being tricked into doing work that they would never take on voluntarily.
“I believe tech workers need informed consent about when their work may lead to loss of life or
suppression of human rights or freedoms,” Poulson told the Guardian in London, where he is due
to speak at the Open Rights Group’s annual conference on data and democracy on Saturday.
“How is it that we help tech workers who saw something go wrong? How is it that we ensure
they have a trusted avenue, somewhere to reach out, that isn’t necessarily going straight to a
journalist?”

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The goal of Tech Inquiry is to harness the growing wave of employee discontent that has spread
across Silicon Valley, and provide workers with the tools they need to stand up to their bosses
and the information they need to know when that pushback is necessary. Poulson’s own stand
against Project Dragonfly, Google’s effort to build a censored search engine to re-enter the
Chinese market, is just one example of that movement. He also cites pushback within Google
against Project Maven, a Pentagon AI project that that the company signed up to in April 2017,
as well as movements at other companies including Microsoft, Amazon and Intel.
Tech has no moral code. It is everyone’s job now to fight for one
Key to Poulson is extending that power to workers in the design and development phases of the
industry, where work is often carried out in the greatest secrecy and the public has the least
ability to kick up a fuss if it moves in a dangerous or alarming direction. “Internally, and
especially in a research department like I was in, there is a feeling that you have a free pass until
you’re actually getting ready to hit the button to launch it.”
When Dragonfly was revealed to the public, for instance, “the response from [Google’s chief
executive] Sundar Pichai was to try and argue that there should be no accountability because this
was ‘just an exploratory project’… And this was not just specific to Dragonfly. I ran into this in
YouTube, on a project doing conversational recommendation engines.”
Adults tend not to search conversationally, Poulson explains, instead typing in more structured
queries: rather than searching “how do I tie a bow tie”, they may just search “bow tie how to”.
Because of that, YouTube had to find a better dataset to focus on more natural queries, and
settled on child users.

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“One of the project leads is explaining that we’re going to use a data set from YouTube, and
from a younger audience, because they use more natural language. I spoke out, and said ‘we
can’t use children’s data’, and the response was ‘this is fine, their parents gave the OK’. I spoke
to coworkers and they said ‘don’t worry, by the time the thing launches, we’ll have had a
thorough privacy review’. When you do R&D, there’s this idea that you can cut corners and have
the privacy team fix it later.”
Allowing free ethical rein for “experiments” is dangerous, Poulson argues. For one thing, by the
time a project is nearing completion, “you’ve created an entire team whose entire career
investment is to launch this thing. And, further, you’ve normalised the behaviour to a bunch of
engineers. There’s something fundamental: The first time you see your company doing
something, that’s when you’re going to speak out. After that, a switch flips for you, and you
accept it.”